Perfect. I also love the “if you tax the rich / corporations, you take away jobs!” reasoning. At some point reality is going to have to set in. The wealth disparity in the US is getting entirely out of hand, and the people in charge are in the pocket of the rich. At some point that becomes a formula for Really Bad Things.

A central point of debate in recent years is what role corporate money plays and should play in democratic politics. Tillman Act of 1907, banned corporate political contributions to national campaigns. But relatively recent Supreme Court decisions have given corporate money political power: Buckley v. Valeo (1976) ruled that political spending is protected by the First Amendment’s right to free speech, i.e. money = speech, while Citizens United (2010) ruled that corporate political spending is protected, holding that corporations have a First Amendment right to free speech.

Maybe because, even though Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad was decided in the late 19th century, we’re finally getting mad as hell and deciding not to take it anymore. Maybe because our country claims to be broke while refusing to ask our wealthiest corporations for a red cent. In other words, the corporations and their government stooges have gone too far.

“Why is this suddenly a controversial topic? Corporate personality has
existed for a while, since the 19th century in the UK, and probably as
long in the US. ”

Check your history, until the early 20th century, in the US a corporate charter could not be issued unless the filers could show some public or societal benefit. “Corporate Personhood” is linked back to a particular Supreme Court decision, however, that convention is based purely on transcripts of deliberation and oral arguments. The *actual* ruling made no such conclusions.

The idea of limitation of liability or “the corporate veil” is an important one. However, in modern corporations, it has overly indulged. In theory, a corporate charter can be revoked for corporate malfeasance. In practice, it has never occurred.

We will never have a stable, or ethical corporate system until officers and senior management are held criminally responsible for the criminal policies of the companies they manage. No, a CEO should not go to prison for the actions of a single bad actor in his organization – however, it would be completely rational to charge Rupert Murdoch, or senior members of his board with felony trespass if they knew it was happening, or criminal negligence if they did not.

Of course, here in the states, we can’t even charge bankers or government officials when we have written evidence and an unimpeachable paper trail.

Dimwits.
I guess some people never heard of the US Revolution which was primarily to get out from under Crazy King George and the India Tea company. The Boston Tea party ironically was about getting rid of corporations, which our founding fathers went out of their way to prohibit in the US constitution. Corporations came back with a vengeance when hack lawyer for hire A Lincoln gave them super citizenship around the same time he presided over the re-emergence of fascism in a little thing called the US civil war. Talk about the military industrial complex. The industrial (corporate) North did very well with that number.